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Georgia is Moving Toward the West And There Is No Need To 'Mourn' Mikhail Saakashvili

Seth Mandel, writing at Commentary, has a column that attacks the Obama administration for doing…something. Or not doing something. Having read and re-read the column several times, it’s not clear what exactly Mandel thinks the Obama administration did or didn’t do wrong regarding Georgia and its recent election. Should Obama have simply rejected the results of voting? Should it have just declared Saakashvili the winner regardless of what actual Georgians thought? Mandel doesn’t really say, he just thinks that Saakashvili’s loss was bad and that, somehow, this is all really Obama’s fault:

A better relationship with Russia seems to be exactly what the Obama administration would want for Georgia, since Obama and McFaul have now gotten everything they needed from Georgia and no longer have much use for our ally. Georgia hasn’t been treated much worse than the rest of our allies by the Obama administration, but that’s still pretty terrible. In any event, I would guess the Obama administration is willing to offer all three cheers for the Georgian election.

This is very much in keeping with a lot of complaints I’ve seen from the neoconservative right that somehow the recent Georgia election is a Russian “victory” or a US “defeat.” I’m hardly an Obama water carrier but isn’t it just a tad excessive to blame him for the outcome of a fully free and fair democratic election in a foreign country?

What has Obama actually done to Georgia that is even “bad” or “disagreeable” let alone “pretty terrible?” Mandel strongly suggests that the administration’s efforts to get Georgia to agree to Russia’s WTO accession was some sort of cravenly appeasement of the Kremlin. But one of the primary beneficiaries of Russia’s accession (and thus its reduced ability to use punitive tariffs and other retaliatory trade measures) will be…Georgia.

Indeed, Mandel himself notes that WTO entry will gradually help force “Russia to play by the same rules as the international community.” He doesn’t seem to understand how directly this will improve Georgia’s own well being and security. Georgia, which used to conduct a substantial amount of bi-lateral trade with Russia, was not exactly well served byits large and irascible neighbor’s crippling economic embargo. It doesn’t take a particularly vivid imagination to see how increased trade between the two countries will be beneficial in economic, security, and political terms.*

It’s also really hard to see how Georgian interests actually benefited from Saakashvili’s ostentatious anti-Russian posturing. I hate to sound so banal, but if you look at a map you can see why Georgia needs to have some sort of modus vivendi with Russia. Mandel contemptuously says that “a better relationship with Russia seems to be exactly what the Obama administration would want.” This strongly suggests that he’s opposed to the very idea of improved Russian-Georgian relations (and, conversely, that he’s fully in favor of bad Russian-Georgian relations). That just doesn’t make much sense when you consider the basic geopolitical realities of the region.

Whether or not improving relations with Russia is a good idea is purely a question of what the Russians demand and what the Georgians would get in return. There are some deals that would undoubtedly be very bad and disagreeable. If, say, the Russian proposal for “improved relations” was their standard-issue offer of “we’ll give you cheap natural gas if you join the customs union” then Georgia would be very wise to reject it. But what would the counterargument be if the Georgians and Russians were able to agree to something vaguely analogous to the tentative rapprochement between the Russians and Poles? ”No, you two should constantly engage in empty rhetorical posturing!” If there was a modest quid-pro-quo deal that wouldn’t comprehensively alter the bilateral relationship but that would remove some of the animosity and bad blood, why would anyone object to that?

More generally Mandel’s piece is suffused with the idea that somehow “our ally” lost in Georgia. But that’s ridiculous, unless one seriously wants to argue that the Untied States government was individually allied with Mikhail Saakashvili and not with the nation of Georgia. The “pro Russia” Ivanishvili has loudly, repeatedly, and specifically repeated his intention of joining NATO and the EU, which is the sort of thing you’d like to hear from an ally. As I’ve said before it is possible, Ivanishvili being a politician, that this is all a big mendacious song and dance. However, it would appear that there is extremely broad-based and enthusiastic support from across the Georgian political spectrum for integration with Western institutions, which is something that people like Mandel ought to cheer. Even if Ivanishvili is a Manchurian candidate personally dispatched by Putin, dear Bidzina will have to keep Georgia moving in a Western direction unless he wants to have a very short political career.

The fact that Ivanishvili is loudly proclaiming his intention of joining the West does not suggest that a US ally has been “defeated.” Rather it suggests that Georgia genuinely wants to move in a Westward direction and that it will eventually find a way of making that happen. I’m not overly concerned with the decisions of the Georgian electorate, but for someone like Mandel who clearly puts a heavy emphasis on the US-Georgia relationship this would seem to be a cause for celebration, not mourning.

* I might be mis-remembering, but I swear there’s an old aphorism roughly equivalent to “any border that’s not being crossed by traders will soon be crossed by tanks” which seems appropriate in this instance

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